I focus almost exclusively on PvP, whether solo, small gang, or large bloc warfare. In the past, I've been a miner, mission runner, and faction warfare jockey. I'm particularly interested in helping high-sec players get into 0.0 combat.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Sneaky Devs and Pesky Patch Notes

So, the patch notes for Parallax are out. It’s a fairly light patch, with a lot of fixes
and user interface changes. I honestly
don’t see much that excites me. Go ahead
and read the notes if you’re interested in the minutiae.

But there were two changes that actually made me gasp as I
was reading through the preparing the kids for Halloween.

The first is one CCP apparently can’t do much about. The new code they’re rolling out over the
next few patches includes some adjustments in how various calculations are
performed. One of those changes is to
how bonuses are applied. As a result:

Fleet bonuses from the
skills Leadership, Skirmish Warfare, and Information Warfare are now stacking
penalized together with bonuses from other sources like modules. Attention: This
change only impacts the targeting speed bonus from the Leadership skill, the
agility bonus from the Skirmish Warfare skill, and targeting range bonus from
the Information Warfare skill. The bonuses provided by the warfare link modules
have not changed.

No, this isn’t a first step in adjusting off-grid boosters
to only apply when on-grid, and it only affects the effects of leadership
skills themselves, not warfare links.
But it does influence the way some bonuses are applied, and that in
itself is interesting. I’m also
intrigued that it was referenced as a throwaway line in the patch notes, with
no real attention drawn to it.

Even though this change doesn’t seem to come as a first step
in tackling OGBs, I do still hold out hope that that the OGB acronym will soon
be changed from “off-grid” to “on-grid”.
CCP has stated before that they want citadels to be able to apply
affects to ships on the same grid, perhaps even within a certain range, so I
see no reason why that code couldn’t be used to relate to links as well. In an age where CCP is trying to bring as
much on-grid and require as much activity as possible from a wide range of
players, I can’t imagine off-grid boosters are around any longer for any reason
behind technical limitations.

But that’s not the big news to come out of Parallax. No, for that, you need to read a bit further.

A character with a
criminal flag in a high-sec system is no longer able to board/switch ships
whilst in space.

Such a casual sentence,
easily forgotten as your eye passes over to a ridiculously long
microtransaction list – err, I mean list of ship skins – that immediately
follows it. It barely stretches beyond
two lines. There was no conversation
about it in advance of the changes. It’s
the equivalent of a 11th hour concession to save a whale
masturbating program inserted into a Senate bill on foreign relations to ensure
enough votes.

When hyperdunking became “a thing”, haulers were up in
arms. Initially, CCP said it was perfectly acceptable.
And, while they didn’t explicitly say it
was no longer okay, it’s also no longer possible from a mechanics perspective. So, you can still do it… if you can find a
way to do it.

Mind you, I don’t respect gankers in high-sec. I don’t find it particularly engaging PvP, and
I think it serves to cause more players to quit than not. However, I do think it’s existence is
essential, as much as I look down on it.
Every area of space needs some risk, and high-sec is too safe, and
allows too much self-sufficiency. So
long as high-sec consists of more than 20 solar systems per empire, and isn’t islanded
among low-sec (which I think is a great solution, by the way), it’s essential.

But hyperdunking, in my mind, took advantage of a silly
mechanical limitation. Why would CONCORD stop at blowing
up your ship and leaving your pod?
Effectively, they’re killing everyone on your ship (Rixx, I didn’t
forget about your ship crews!), but leaving the most guilty party alive and
well… that makes no narrative sense.

But, more generally, a target cannot possibly counter
it. IF your scout sees 50 pilots sitting
on a gate in Catalysts, you can stop your ship from jumping and go another
route, or dock up. But with hyperdunking, fewer pilots can project the power of
many times their number. Assessing risk
is impossible for the hauler. They can
no longer count numbers to see if they’ll be safe. And that renders it uncounterable.

So, I’m definitely as glad to see hyperdunking go away as I
am to see ganking remain a part of the game.
But surely, this backdoor policy change deserves a little more notice
and advance warning than a casual comment buried in the middle of patch notes? That holds doubly true in light of the swirl
of controversy caused by the invention of the practice.

Anyways, I found it very interesting that this controversial
practice was wiped out so neatly and with so little fanfare. I think it’s a good change and seems like a
logical principle within the lore.

Hyperdunking is being removed because the people that came up with it couldn't exercise the self control needed to stop pushing and prodding away at it until they found as way to solo gank freighters in a frigate.

I'm sure CCP would have liked to keep hyperdunking but now it's just a casualty of closing an exploit.

"Q: Are you changing the grid?A: (CCP Larrikin looks at CCP Nullarbor. CCP Nullarbor has been examining grid sizes as part of Citadel development) We are looking at the grid size. It turns out there is not a reason for them to be small. We are investigating it due to other reasons. We are investigating the lock range, camera, and adding more UI to control at distances and such."

"We are looking at the grid size. It turns out there is not a reason for them to be small." Oh hells yes!!!

The meaning of 'Off' or 'On' Grid may be itself changing too... now THAT would be interesting... how about a grid of 1000km?.... everything visible? everyone visible? warp-toable? Hmmmmmm.... =]

I'm totally okay with expanding grid size and forcing boosters to be on grid. Totally okay with it. I just want to force links to be away from POSes and in the thick of it, even if that "thick" is 1,000 km away.

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